Cell at Eastern State

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Back From The Territories.

Got back from my homemade book tour on Wednesday, after hitting North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississipi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The total was 3914 miles. Missed my kids, but I met a lot of great people along the way and enjoyed the hell out of New Orleans, Austin, Houston and St. Louis, where I met up with these degenerates:

That's me, badass Matt McBride, Scott Phillips, Jed Ayres, Derek Nikitas and a nice young lady who was the object of a fundraising auction at the bar and who I believe was named Heidi. The auction was emceed by silver-tongued Scott Phillips, and the money raised was either intended to send the nice young lady back to the convent she had wandered away from, or to defend her against charges of stealing a police car and burning down an orphanage.

I had a great time, but will have to insist for future events of this kind that the bill only include writers who aren't way better than me. Phillips took the hint and just ran the auction, but McBride, Ayres and Nikitas all insisted on wowing the audience with woozily funny and harrowing stories of mayhem. After the event, their tires may or may not have been slashed for what one crazed author present charged was 'obvious showboating.'

Got one ticket (thanks, Missouri!) but other than that the trip went off smoothly, and I even scored tons of great books, some given to me by the awesome Scott Montgomery of BookPeople, who is himself a walking encyclopedia of excellent genre fiction. One surprising note: the economy of America west of the Ohio is apparently dominated by fireworks and porn, as every highway exit west of Mobile and north of Houston features a fireworks outlet and an adult superstore, most with interestingly biblical names. Who says Americans can't handle ambiguity?

Back at home, I was joined by dozens of friends at the official launch of Wolves of Fairmount Park, at the Doylestown Bookshop. It was an excellent time and I saw a bunch of old friends. The great cake drew in scores of innocent children, who, no doubt corrupted and despoiled by proximity to crime fiction, may go the wrong road in future and end up penning pot-boilers and penny-dreadfuls of their own.

At right, a traveling huckster cons an unsuspecting farmer out of his wages with what seems to be a book about local fauna. When the poor local man realizes his error, the grifter will have made his way to the next town, leaving the unlucky sharecropper to grapple with the after-effects of exposure to unwholesome reading material.

Order Dope Thief

From Akashic Books

My Crime Film Project

Praise for "Wolves of Fairmount Park"

"(A) mesmerizing and most impressive book... Tafoya is finding his own original voice, one that will make readers sit up and listen." - Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal

"Tafoya tackles this ambitious story with a tightly focused plot and in-depth insight into myriad characters. "The Wolves of Fairmount Park" is a fresh and original work that never succumbs to cliches." - Oline Cogdill, South Florida Sun Sentinel

"Tafoya's East Falls tragedy establishes the same mood that permeates Richard Price's novels – the looming of implacable and unavoidable violence...Tafoya writes with ample energy, none of it wasted." - David Hiltbrand, Philadelphia Inquirer

"Dennis Lehane fans will welcome Tafoya's second crime novel, which delivers on the promise of his debut, Dope Thief...Tafoya skillfully shifts among the perspectives of the two grieving fathers, Orlando, and Danny Martinez, the primary investigator on the case. The bleak worldview Brendan articulates...will resonate with classic noir readers, who will hope Tafoya is their guide through the mean streets for years to come." - Starred Review, Publishers Weekly

"A drive-by shooting fells two teenagers. Is it mindless accident or malice aforethought? Tafoya writes about ugliness with such skill, such relentless fidelity, that readers prone to depression should proceed with caution."-Kirkus

"Two middle-class teenagers are victims of a drive-by shooting as they stand in front of a Philadelphia house where drugs are sold. One dies, the other is left in a coma. That straightforward premise compels this gritty, insightful crime novel...Tafoya’s characters, whether cops, killers, or victims, are multidimensional, and his portrait of the city’s drug trade is bleakly realistic. Tafoya’s Dope Thief (2009) was a fine debut. This much more ambitious follow-up cements his position as an up-and-coming hard-boiled writer." -Booklist

"Tafoya writes gritty and dark, and his language is beautifully spare. The story opens with two teenagers getting shot on a street corner in Philadelphia, and right from the beginning, you know this story is going somewhere. Tafoya punches right through to the heart of the action, and even as his characters make wrong and imperfect choices, you can’t help but buckle your seatbelt and go along for the ride." -Carla Buckley, The Things That Keep Us Here

"Dennis Tafoya returns with THE WOLVES IN FAIRMOUNT PARK, a dark and lyrical novel filled with passion, heartbreak, gorgeous imagery and devious twists. Brilliant and beautiful." -Jonathan Maberry, international best-selling author of The Dragon Factory

Praise for Dope Thief

“Dope Thief is first-rate literary noir, the hardest core crime novel I’ve read this year. It manages to be funny without ever descending into the trivial, and at its core it’s harrowing. An amazingly assured debut by Dennis Tafoya, a writer I know I’ll be following for years to come.” —Scott Phillips, author of The Ice Harvest, The Walkaway and Cottonwood

“Dope Thief is one of those first novels that scream for us to pay attention to an important new voice in crime fiction. Dennis Tafoya writes a fast, quirky, and thoroughly twisted tale of corruption, heroism, and redemption that will leave its mark on you.” —Jonathan Maberry, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Patient Zero

“Don't be fooled by the words "A Mystery" on the front cover, or the adjectives "noir" and "fast-paced" on the back. This is as tender and subtle a portrait of a criminal mind I've ever seen. Effortlessly beautiful and heartfelt, even as the bullets fly and the wounds open. If In Cold Blood was set in a meth lab, and written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, you'd have Dope Thief.” - Kelly Simmons, author of Standing Still

"(A) fine first novel. Tafoya is off to a promising start: Ray and a number of other characters are quirky and engaging. The locale works well. The plotting is solid, and the action has a hard, violent edge that recalls Richard Price." -Booklist

"A boy “born into the life” makes a wrenching attempt to change course or die trying in a first novel that marks Tafoya as a writer to watch." -Publishers Weekly

"An impressive debut by a writer savvy enough to understand that the way to a reader’s heart is often as not through flawed characters." -Kirkus Reviews

About Me

Dennis Tafoya lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and is the author of two novels, Dope Thief and The Wolves of Fairmount Park, as well as numerous short stories appearing in collections such as Philadelphia Noir, coming November 2010 from Akashic Books. He is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the International Thriller Writers, and the Liars Club, a Philadelphia-area writers group.